The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP) joins the nation and the world in mourning the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. We in the abolition community have lost a champion in the struggle to end the death penalty, but we are confident that this struggle will be won.
Senator Kennedy’s moral opposition to the death penalty was steadfast. He understood that maintaining the death penalty is at odds with our nation’s commitment to due process and equality of the law. These values – that each of us be treated equally regardless of our race, class or social station – were ideals that he understood to be the core of our American consciousness.
In his essay featured in the book “Congregation of the Condemned: Voices against the Death Penalty” (Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1991), Senator Kennedy listed the “arbitrary and discriminatory” application of the death penalty, and the fact that it has no safeguards against convicting and executing innocent people, as among his reasons for opposing it. “No system of justice, however wise or resourceful it judges and juries may be, can eliminate this possibility,” he wrote. “That is a risk we can take when the punishment is imprisonment, because jailed defendants can always be set free when their innocence is proved. But that is a burden we cannot accept when the punishment is death.”
Moreover, wrote Senator Kennedy, the death penalty does not deter violent crime. “Some of the most convincing evidence is found in the experience of other western democracies. Not one of these countries has capital punishment for peacetime crimes, yet every one of them has a murder rate less than half that of the United States.” No matter how brutal the crime a person has committed, he wrote, “the infliction of death at the hands of government brutalizes our society. Government should not have the power to put a human being to death.”
It has been an honor to have had the late Senator to lend his wise, eloquent and compassionate voice to the debate on capital punishment. We pledge here to continue the debate and to do it in the spirit of openness, respect and concern for the interest of others that Senator Kennedy exemplified.
Source: National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP), Sept. 2009
Senator Kennedy’s moral opposition to the death penalty was steadfast. He understood that maintaining the death penalty is at odds with our nation’s commitment to due process and equality of the law. These values – that each of us be treated equally regardless of our race, class or social station – were ideals that he understood to be the core of our American consciousness.
In his essay featured in the book “Congregation of the Condemned: Voices against the Death Penalty” (Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1991), Senator Kennedy listed the “arbitrary and discriminatory” application of the death penalty, and the fact that it has no safeguards against convicting and executing innocent people, as among his reasons for opposing it. “No system of justice, however wise or resourceful it judges and juries may be, can eliminate this possibility,” he wrote. “That is a risk we can take when the punishment is imprisonment, because jailed defendants can always be set free when their innocence is proved. But that is a burden we cannot accept when the punishment is death.”
Moreover, wrote Senator Kennedy, the death penalty does not deter violent crime. “Some of the most convincing evidence is found in the experience of other western democracies. Not one of these countries has capital punishment for peacetime crimes, yet every one of them has a murder rate less than half that of the United States.” No matter how brutal the crime a person has committed, he wrote, “the infliction of death at the hands of government brutalizes our society. Government should not have the power to put a human being to death.”
It has been an honor to have had the late Senator to lend his wise, eloquent and compassionate voice to the debate on capital punishment. We pledge here to continue the debate and to do it in the spirit of openness, respect and concern for the interest of others that Senator Kennedy exemplified.
Source: National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP), Sept. 2009
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